Obama signs bill to avert fiscal cliff, via autopen

President Barack Obama ordered Wednesday that his signature be affixed to legislation that averts the bulk of the so-called "fiscal cliff" and prevents federal income tax rates from rising on the vast majority of Americans, the White House said.

The official copy of the high-profile bill was signed at Obama's direction with an autopen, a device that places a facsimile of a person's signature on a document, a senior White House official told a pool reporter accompanying the president on the second leg of his winter break in Hawaii.

"We received the bill late this afternoon, and it was immediately processed. A copy was delivered to the President for review. He then directed the bill be signed by autopen," said the official, who was not further identified.

The White House statement announcing the signing was dated Wednesday, but arrived in the in-boxes of reporters via e-mail just after midnight Thursday morning Eastern time. The announcement notes that the bill also puts off for two months the so-called "sequester" of hundreds of billions of dollars in defense and domestic spending that was due to kick in at the start of the year and extends expiring unemployment benefits for another year, among other provisions.

The bill passed the Senate, 89-8, in the wee hours of New Year's Day. After discussions about whether to try to amend the bill to add more spending cuts, the House passed it as is, 257-167, late that same day. Shortly after the House vote, Obama departed Washington for Hawaii, to rejoin his family vacation.

Economic experts had warned that the combination of tax increases and spending reductions set to take place at the beginning of this year would likely have thrown the U.S. back into recession if allowed to take effect. The new measure does not ward off all tax hikes, however. Individuals with income over $400,000 and families with income over $450,000 will see their federal taxes on income over those amounts rise to the Clinton-era level of 39.6 percent. And all working Americans will be hit by a 2 percent hike in Social Security taxes on income up to about $113,000.

In 2005, during President George W. Bush's administration, the Justice Department issued a legal opinion upholding the president's right to sign bills by autopen and suggested an aide could even sign bills for the president at his direction. Obama has used the autopen-signing technique for legislation on at least a couple of occasions, but the validity of it has never been tested in the courts.

One alternative used by prior administrations is to have the physical bill flown from Washington to wherever in the world the president is traveling. It's unclear whether Obama's aides rejected that option in this instance due to the cost or to the urgency of getting the measure signed.